Tag: commentary

Posted on

paradoxy-intent:

sassy-gay-justice:

feministgamingmatters:

Someone did a study on sexualisation in video games, and GGers mocked them for…doing research? Because they were doing it instead of ““““making their own games.”““““ So I guess not only critique but, like, literal science isn’t valid now?

WE ARE making our own games and these dudes cry about “forced diversity” or “tokenism” or “political agendas” or w/e!! You legitimately cannot win!

I saw it put in the most interesting way a while ago: They don’t expect us to have the skill, time, effort, or desire to make our own games. They just want us to be silent.

They assume that we just want to “complain” and “be offended at everything” and they want to hand-wave away any concerns we have, regardless of their validity.

Then they assume we don’t have the skills to make our own games because they don’t think we love games as much as they supposedly do, nor do they think we haven’t been doing that since forever, and now it’s just so much easier for anyone to do.

So, they tell us to “make our own games” if we don’t like theirs, and then we do, and they pitch a fit that people are even paying attention to them or saying they’re actually good. We research, we make our own games, we do everything they tell us to do, and we still aren’t valid to them.

And we never fucking will be, because it’s never been about any of their pitiful excuses. It’s always been about shutting us out by any means necessary.

No matter how they dress it up with their bullshit about “ethics”, it’s always been about exclusion of the “undesirables” for GG. They just don’t want our “kind” here, and by that they mean anyone who isn’t a cishet white dude or isn’t okay with gaming being a “male space” for cishet white dudes.

The big issue with the “stop complaining and make your own games/shows/books/comics” rhetoric is that it’s unwinnable by design.

When someone’s not a content creator, but a critic, researcher or even just a fan casually sharing their opinion, the Status Quo Warriors would shut them down for “doing nothing” or “just whining” or “not appreciating” the media as they already are.

If someone is a content creator, the Status Quo Warriors would accuse their work of all the above “political agendas” (not realizing every creative work is political by nature) and blow every minute problem the work might have out of proportion.

And then they have the audacity to say that it’s the critics who are never satisfied.

“Go make your own thing” is really yet another variation of making up arbitrary conditions to prevent status quo-upholding media from being critiqued.

~Ozzie

Posted on

paradoxy-intent:

sassy-gay-justice:

feministgamingmatters:

Someone did a study on sexualisation in video games, and GGers mocked them for…doing research? Because they were doing it instead of ““““making their own games.”““““ So I guess not only critique but, like, literal science isn’t valid now?

WE ARE making our own games and these dudes cry about “forced diversity” or “tokenism” or “political agendas” or w/e!! You legitimately cannot win!

I saw it put in the most interesting way a while ago: They don’t expect us to have the skill, time, effort, or desire to make our own games. They just want us to be silent.

They assume that we just want to “complain” and “be offended at everything” and they want to hand-wave away any concerns we have, regardless of their validity.

Then they assume we don’t have the skills to make our own games because they don’t think we love games as much as they supposedly do, nor do they think we haven’t been doing that since forever, and now it’s just so much easier for anyone to do.

So, they tell us to “make our own games” if we don’t like theirs, and then we do, and they pitch a fit that people are even paying attention to them or saying they’re actually good. We research, we make our own games, we do everything they tell us to do, and we still aren’t valid to them.

And we never fucking will be, because it’s never been about any of their pitiful excuses. It’s always been about shutting us out by any means necessary.

No matter how they dress it up with their bullshit about “ethics”, it’s always been about exclusion of the “undesirables” for GG. They just don’t want our “kind” here, and by that they mean anyone who isn’t a cishet white dude or isn’t okay with gaming being a “male space” for cishet white dudes.

The big issue with the “stop complaining and make your own games/shows/books/comics” rhetoric is that it’s unwinnable by design.

When someone’s not a content creator, but a critic, researcher or even just a fan casually sharing their opinion, the Status Quo Warriors would shut them down for “doing nothing” or “just whining” or “not appreciating” the media as they already are.

If someone is a content creator, the Status Quo Warriors would accuse their work of all the above “political agendas” (not realizing every creative work is political by nature) and blow every minute problem the work might have out of proportion.

And then they have the audacity to say that it’s the critics who are never satisfied.

“Go make your own thing” is really yet another variation of making up arbitrary conditions to prevent status quo-upholding media from being critiqued.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Things assholes say to defend shitty female armor

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

cuppykin:

-“She chooses to dress that way!”
-“It’s fantasy, get over it!”
-“I’m a girl and it doesn’t bother me!”
-“You see from her lore she doesn’t need protection because as an all powerful being of magic she…”
-“Conan the barbarian!”
-“If you don’t like it make your own content!”
-“I guess nobody can be creative any more!”

~~Feel free to add ur own~~

We have a game about that!

– wincenworks

More on Rhetoric Bingo | More on rhetoric

As a follow up to our recent discussion on totally legit reasons why games should be excluded from criticism, it seemed appropriate to bring back this handy starter list on why if something somehow does become eligible for criticism then that criticism doesn’t matter anyway.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Things assholes say to defend shitty female armor

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

cuppykin:

-“She chooses to dress that way!”
-“It’s fantasy, get over it!”
-“I’m a girl and it doesn’t bother me!”
-“You see from her lore she doesn’t need protection because as an all powerful being of magic she…”
-“Conan the barbarian!”
-“If you don’t like it make your own content!”
-“I guess nobody can be creative any more!”

~~Feel free to add ur own~~

We have a game about that!

– wincenworks

More on Rhetoric Bingo | More on rhetoric

As a follow up to our recent discussion on totally legit reasons why games should be excluded from criticism, it seemed appropriate to bring back this handy starter list on why if something somehow does become eligible for criticism then that criticism doesn’t matter anyway.

– wincenworks

Posted on

So my brother claims that the only games that have oversexualized girls are free to play games or just generally bad games. Overwatch apparently doesn’t count because “it’s overrated” so any examples for good games with skimpy armour? Thanks a lot!

Well, like so many explanations, this creates some obvious issues.

Firstly it’s dependent upon arbitrary divisions that mostly serve to try to pretend various parts of media just don’t exist or somehow don’t matter regardless of who  consumes them.

For example: only free to play?

League of Legends is a free to play game that generates millions in revenues, has a professional esports scene and pretty much launched the rise of MOBAs as a gaming genre.  While it does have some characters who are positive examples, and the occasional sexy man, it’s in fact so problematic it has a whole blog trying to keep track of it all (ie @leagueofsexism)

Long time offender World of Warcraft is basically the MMORPG that got away with not being a free to play game for years and years (and the free part available today is super stingy). 
Ultimately, Free To Play is just a business model – there are good games that use it well and terrible games that try desperately to exploit it. 

As for the statement of generally bad games, well it’s certainly true that many games that rely upon the skimpy armor are terrible.  It’s also true their poor reception tells you everything you need to know about the myth that “sex sells”. However, there’s certainly also celebrated AAA titles that feature all kinds of terrible female attire:

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain has a massively critically successful creation of game development superstar Hideo Kojima.  It was a massive financial success and brought us so, so many wonderful breathing through your skin jokes.

The Witcher 3 collected a slew of awards, critical praise and is still getting massive sales of the game itself and it’s hefty DLC expansion packs after resorting to trying to blame a female character for her questionable battle attire choices and pretend the rest of the problems weren’t there.

As for overrated… well by who?

Every game has people who feel it’s overrated and most games have people who think it’s underrated.  No opinion though changes that Overwatch has sold millions of copies, gotten massive amounts of media attention, generated tons of vocal fans and made millions of dollars for Blizzard.

Really the arguments above aren’t really a useful statements, they’re just an excuse to dismiss literally any game as not being worthy of valid concern.

– wincenworks

Continuing from your brother’s logic, here’s an extended list of arbitrary things a game can’t be if we want to judge its treatment of women:

  • it’s free to play
  • it’s freemium/pay to play/any other technically free

    gameplay model

    that involves microtransactions for the full experience

  • it’s popular
  • it never became popular
  • it’s overrated
  • it’s underrated
  • its core demographic are horny men
  • its core demographic are children
  • it’s made in America and therefore immune to criticism under freedom of speech 
  • it’s made outside of America and therefore comes from a magical land of porn and fairy dust 
  • the title contains letters of some sort in it 

  • it has graphics of some kind

Well that suuure leaves us with a fair and totally unbiased choice of games to talk about.

~Ozzie

Posted on

ilovetoomanydifferentthings:

So my brother claims that the only games that have oversexualized girls are free to play games or just generally bad games. Overwatch apparently doesn’t count because “it’s overrated” so any examples for good games with skimpy armour? Thanks a lot!

Well, like so many explanations, this creates some obvious issues.

Firstly it’s dependent upon arbitrary divisions that mostly serve to try to pretend various parts of media just don’t exist or somehow don’t matter regardless of who  consumes them.

For example: only free to play?

League of Legends is a free to play game that generates millions in revenues, has a professional esports scene and pretty much launched the rise of MOBAs as a gaming genre.  While it does have some characters who are positive examples, and the occasional sexy man, it’s in fact so problematic it has a whole blog trying to keep track of it all (ie @leagueofsexism)

Long time offender World of Warcraft is basically the MMORPG that got away with not being a free to play game for years and years (and the free part available today is super stingy). 
Ultimately, Free To Play is just a business model – there are good games that use it well and terrible games that try desperately to exploit it. 

As for the statement of generally bad games, well it’s certainly true that many games that rely upon the skimpy armor are terrible.  It’s also true their poor reception tells you everything you need to know about the myth that “sex sells”. However, there’s certainly also celebrated AAA titles that feature all kinds of terrible female attire:

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain has a massively critically successful creation of game development superstar Hideo Kojima.  It was a massive financial success and brought us so, so many wonderful breathing through your skin jokes.

The Witcher 3 collected a slew of awards, critical praise and is still getting massive sales of the game itself and it’s hefty DLC expansion packs after resorting to trying to blame a female character for her questionable battle attire choices and pretend the rest of the problems weren’t there.

As for overrated… well by who?

Every game has people who feel it’s overrated and most games have people who think it’s underrated.  No opinion though changes that Overwatch has sold millions of copies, gotten massive amounts of media attention, generated tons of vocal fans and made millions of dollars for Blizzard.

Really the arguments above aren’t really a useful statements, they’re just an excuse to dismiss literally any game as not being worthy of valid concern.

– wincenworks

Continuing from your brother’s logic, here’s an extended list of arbitrary things a game can’t be if we want to judge its treatment of women:

  • it’s free to play
  • it’s freemium/pay to play/any other technically free

    gameplay model

    that involves microtransactions for the full experience

  • it’s popular
  • it never became popular
  • it’s overrated
  • it’s underrated
  • its core demographic are horny men
  • its core demographic are children
  • it’s made in America and therefore immune to criticism under freedom of speech 
  • it’s made outside of America and therefore comes from a magical land of porn and fairy dust 
  • the title contains letters of some sort in it 

  • it has graphics of some kind

Well that suuure leaves us with a fair and totally unbiased choice of games to talk about.

~Ozzie

Posted on

so sexism and objectification aside, is there a drastic difference between the protection offered by, say, leather or normal cloth versus bare skin? obviously there are significant advantages in the case of armour, but i was wondering more about spandex-wearing superheroes. or is the spandex usually abnormally tough?

Bringing this back just to highlight that while spandex has never been a particularly practical material for a battle uniform, there’s a massive disparity between how it was used in designs for male and female character concepts in the superhero genre… and that continues to this day (ht: @thespookiestace)

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. Spandex and regular clothes can have some protective qualities but that’s not why superheroes wear spandex.

The thing with protection and in order to properly estimate how well something will protect you – you need to know what you’re protecting against.  Depending on the hazard and the situation, a little cloth can work wonders.

Re-enforced clothes like Battle Dress Uniforms can protect against environmental hazards (such as thorn bushes, gravel, etc), light shrapnel, chemical agents, detection via infrared, low heat flames, etc. They won’t save your life immediately but they’ll protect against pain, shock and infections.  But you’ll still want to wear armor over the top if you expect to get shot at.

image

Leather can be really protective (hence why it’s considered standard motorcycle gear) and also has potential for lots of re-enforcing.  They’re expensive, but you can get bullet armor that will protect against the vast majority of pistols – and still look like an old school biker jacket.

Spandex and similar products are not particularly tough against say bullets, knives or fire.  In fact the main thing it’s advertised as protection against is sunlight. Spandex-like wet suits are often made to protect against chill, wind, sun even being weighed down by water.

The reason that superheroes wear them is not for any protective quality but rather that they allowed artists to showcase the super heroes as having larger than life physiques and being demonstrations of perfection.  While his physique doesn’t seem unattainable now, Superman started in 1938, and this is what a contestants in the 1953 Mr Universe competition looked like:

image

(If he looks familiar, it’s because he’s Sean Connery)

Basically the problem with the double standard is that superheroine designs are less about looking like the perfect powerhouse and more about looking like the perfect sex toy.  To the extent it’s hard to take them seriously and people spend no small amount of time pondering the hazardous of the outfits.

There’s also the matter that creators are often quite comfortable loading up heroes like Batman with so much armor that he needs servos to run and jump around, but heroines like Batgirl are always limited to what can show off her silhouette and show the exact shape of her boobs.

Designs don’t necessarily need to be protective, particularly if you’re selling a larger than life power fantasy – but it shouldn’t look like it’s a massive liability purely for the titillation of the people beyond the fourth wall (unless you’re doing some sort of erotic parody where that’s the point).

– wincenworks

Whywhywhywhywhy. Not only is scarlet witch the only half naked one, she’s also the smallest one in the shot, on the very right (most people are more likely to look to the left first rather than the right, statistically) and has a very unamused-looking expression

If only this was an anomoly and things like Captain Peggy Carter the standard… sadly…

– wincenworks

Posted on

eternalgaylord:

so sexism and objectification aside, is there a drastic difference between the protection offered by, say, leather or normal cloth versus bare skin? obviously there are significant advantages in the case of armour, but i was wondering more about spandex-wearing superheroes. or is the spandex usually abnormally tough?

Bringing this back just to highlight that while spandex has never been a particularly practical material for a battle uniform, there’s a massive disparity between how it was used in designs for male and female character concepts in the superhero genre… and that continues to this day (ht: @thespookiestace)

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. Spandex and regular clothes can have some protective qualities but that’s not why superheroes wear spandex.

The thing with protection and in order to properly estimate how well something will protect you – you need to know what you’re protecting against.  Depending on the hazard and the situation, a little cloth can work wonders.

Re-enforced clothes like Battle Dress Uniforms can protect against environmental hazards (such as thorn bushes, gravel, etc), light shrapnel, chemical agents, detection via infrared, low heat flames, etc. They won’t save your life immediately but they’ll protect against pain, shock and infections.  But you’ll still want to wear armor over the top if you expect to get shot at.

image

Leather can be really protective (hence why it’s considered standard motorcycle gear) and also has potential for lots of re-enforcing.  They’re expensive, but you can get bullet armor that will protect against the vast majority of pistols – and still look like an old school biker jacket.

Spandex and similar products are not particularly tough against say bullets, knives or fire.  In fact the main thing it’s advertised as protection against is sunlight. Spandex-like wet suits are often made to protect against chill, wind, sun even being weighed down by water.

The reason that superheroes wear them is not for any protective quality but rather that they allowed artists to showcase the super heroes as having larger than life physiques and being demonstrations of perfection.  While his physique doesn’t seem unattainable now, Superman started in 1938, and this is what a contestants in the 1953 Mr Universe competition looked like:

image

(If he looks familiar, it’s because he’s Sean Connery)

Basically the problem with the double standard is that superheroine designs are less about looking like the perfect powerhouse and more about looking like the perfect sex toy.  To the extent it’s hard to take them seriously and people spend no small amount of time pondering the hazardous of the outfits.

There’s also the matter that creators are often quite comfortable loading up heroes like Batman with so much armor that he needs servos to run and jump around, but heroines like Batgirl are always limited to what can show off her silhouette and show the exact shape of her boobs.

Designs don’t necessarily need to be protective, particularly if you’re selling a larger than life power fantasy – but it shouldn’t look like it’s a massive liability purely for the titillation of the people beyond the fourth wall (unless you’re doing some sort of erotic parody where that’s the point).

– wincenworks

Whywhywhywhywhy. Not only is scarlet witch the only half naked one, she’s also the smallest one in the shot, on the very right (most people are more likely to look to the left first rather than the right, statistically) and has a very unamused-looking expression

If only this was an anomoly and things like Captain Peggy Carter the standard… sadly…

– wincenworks